


Getting Stuck in Caramel Eyes

by gimmefire



Category: Formula 1 RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-22
Updated: 2007-12-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:46:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gimmefire/pseuds/gimmefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bloody racing drivers, they're all the same. If it's not the women they're making swoon, it's the men.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Getting Stuck in Caramel Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the filming of Richard's attempt to drive a Renault Formula One car. Had to fudge the timelines a bit - in this fic, Fernando is still with Renault. In Richard's POV, italics are his thoughts.

"Bloody hell," Richard muttered to himself, scrubbing his hand over his head. He hadn't been nervous about this until now. Well, alright, that was a lie and not a particularly small or subtle one either. He’d actually felt the first tickle of nerves during that damn discussion back at the TG office, a while after the topic of F1 racing, much to Richard’s displeasure, had been brought up. In fact it was pretty much right after he’d said those cursed words, 'how hard could it be?' and three of the team had outright laughed in his face.

Here, now, looking down at the sleek, blue and yellow, very very expensive Renault R25, at the steering wheel with twenty buttons and dials, at the moulded, snug looking seat that he would very soon be sitting in, he rather began to see why they'd laughed at him. He looked down at himself, all decked out in his yellow race suit, and sighed apprehensively. "Bloody hell," he muttered again.

He wanted a fag. And about four cans of Stella, not that that would help him in the long run. This was going to be the first really fast, really volatile thing he'd driven since the jet car, and though he'd managed to keep it quiet from Andy and the rest of the TG crew, he was _really_ bloody nervous. The race team were off looking at his telemetry readouts from the run he'd just done in the World Series car, leaving him with a few more minutes to reflect on the stupidity of 'how hard could it be'. It was fatal.

He stiffened a little. _Bad choice of words. No, don't think that again. Doesn't help._

"Even if I crash and don't kill myself," he quietly reminded himself as he walked around the car for the umpteenth time, faintly wondering if he should have maybe watched a few F1 races before now. Maybe gotten some tips out of it, somehow. "Overcooking it even a bit around one of these corners means boom, crash...and me completely buggering a-a million billion pound car."

He hoped his hands were trembling from the adrenalin from his last spin around the track. His fingertips brushed over the tyre blanket. "Five hundred quid for a wheel nut."

Something sort of went 'ping' somewhere in his head, and he scrubbed both hands over his face, then letting them rest there as he breathed. "God, this is gonna be the stupidest thing I've ever done."

_What if I panic? What if it's all fine until the roar of that engine gets a bit too familiar and my brain thinks I'm in the jet car again? Am I gonna regress, am I gonna have a breakdown while I'm going two hundred miles an hour?_

So lost in his thoughts was the vaguely terrified Hammond that he failed to hear the sound of a car pulling up outside of the garage, of the race team greeting someone warmly. Even to the point where, once he'd let his hands drop, he failed to notice the person who walked into the garage and stood next to him.

_Right, piece to camera, piece to camera...where the hell are my notes? At least Jeremy isn't here to mock me. Or bore me with his bloody Formula One trivia._

A disbelieving, somewhat delirious laugh escaped Richard of its own accord. "Five hundred quid for a bloody wheel nut..."

"It is quite expensive, isn't it?"

Richard started slightly at the heavily accented voice that came from his right. He turned and found himself in the company of a man who, though he was dressed in the same blue and yellow garb as the race team, did not give the impression of someone who worked behind the scenes. The man grinned behind his mirrored sunglasses. "I try my best not to think about it," he said.

Richard smiled back automatically while his mind scrambled to put a name to the familiar face. _Accent, Renault gear, bit pretty, expensive shades, tousled hair, gotta be a driver._ The man removed his sunglasses and hooked them into his t-shirt collar just as it clicked in Richard's admittedly preoccupied brain.

_Oh my God, it's Fernando Alonso._

The driver offered his hand with another bright smile. "You're Richard Hammond, right?"

"Uh," Richard replied initially. _Eyebrow man,_ a phantom Jeremy offered helpfully somewhere in the back of his mind. Richard's brain finally caught up and he shook his head. "Uh, yeah. Yes, sorry, Richard Hammond, yes." He finally took that offered hand and shook it warmly. "Sorry, brain's a bit complicated at the minute. Didn't actually know you were going to be here, either. I'm slightly more nervous now."

Fernando dipped his head and spoke confidentially. "I'm not actually supposed to be here - the team didn't know I was coming." He quirked one of those eyebrows. "I wanted to meet the man who's going to be driving my car. I won a world championship in this, you know." Pause, a wicked sparkle in his eyes and a faint smirk on his lips. "You're not going to crash it, are you?"

Indignance welled up a little in Richard at that, but he laughed nonetheless. "Well, it's not what I'm aiming for, no!" A slightly more nervous laugh. "Not planning on making it a habit or anything."

Fernando regarded him for a few moments, looked right into Richard's eyes with enough penetrating curiosity to make the presenter feel just a touch uncomfortable. His thought a few minutes earlier popped back into his head. _A bit pretty._ To his credit, he held the gaze from those caramel coloured eyes right up until the last half-second when Richard got the distinct feeling that he was being intensely scrutinised. Somewhere in that undoubtedly slightly odd racing driver's brain (if The Stig was anything to go by - he had to wonder if this double world champion understood clouds) the short, lairy bloke with a penchant for caravan destruction was being analysed, _really_ analysed.

Then the Spaniard looked away, down to his old car, hands slipping into his pockets. At first he said nothing. Richard cleared his throat and felt a little awkward - was he blushing? Shit - and also looked down to the car. Then the other man spoke, softer now.

"You have driven a lot of very fast cars, haven't you?"

Richard sensed it was a rhetorical question, but he answered anyway. "Yes. It's sort of my job, fantastically enough."

Fernando looked up to him again, now utterly serious. "This is nothing like anything you've driven before."

Richard took a deep breath and looked down at the car again, trying not to appear slightly rattled. "Right." _So they keep telling me._ He wasn't about to ring Andy and tell him he was close to bottling it, but Fernando wasn't really instilling any confidence in him. He sort of really wanted a fag or five now. And a lie down. Christ, when did he turn into such a lightweight?

"You won't crash it."

Richard's head snapped up at that, brow furrowing. _What?_ His mouth moved once or twice before he managed to coax sound out of it. "I don't want to be rude, but you've only just met me, I hadn't sat in anything like this until this morning, and when I did I was rubbish, and -" he paused, voice dropping as if nobody else knew. "My track record lately with really fast cars hasn't been as impeccable as it probably should be if I'm getting into a bloody great Formula One car." He deflated slightly and fell silent.

_Ooh, that was a good plan. List all the reasons why you probably shouldn't drive his old car._

Fernando appeared unruffled. To reinforce this, he shrugged. "You won't crash it," he repeated simply.

Richard gave a short laugh. "Look mate, I've not got much confidence in the logical, non-racing brainpower of your lot. Your genitals are probably on upside down."

Fernando's face lit up with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment. "My _genitals_?" He looked down to his crotch, pointed to it, then looked back up to Richard, evidently wondering if he was understanding correctly. "My - ?"

The two of them laughed, Richard shaking his head at himself. "Yeah. I mean, it's a thing - sorry, forget it. Like I said, I'm a bit complicated today."

Fernando flashed a dazzling grin, chuckling. "You're intriguing."

Now it was Richard's turn to quirk an eyebrow. "In what way?"

"You just _are_ ," Fernando replied. "You're a little strange, but you're determined. I think you'll go out there and drive as well as you can - perhaps even better than you can, somehow - and come back safely. What is most important is that you _will_ go out there and you won't crash. I'd bet on it." A considered pause and he patted the fly of his trousers, smirking. "Would you like me to prove that everything is the right way up?"

Richard blinked, eyes wide, and said nothing. His face felt hot. "N-no, that's alright..." _How can you have that much confidence in me?_

"If you're worried that you'll be preoccupied thinking about the cost of the car, trust me when I say this - you won't be." the Spaniard assured, coming closer. "You won't have time to think, not about anything except keeping the car on the track. Every bit of your brain has to go into keeping your reactions as sharp as a razor. Then when you come to a stop at the end of your run, and you won't realise this until then because your brain will have been too busy. Again, trust me with this." His voice dropped, once again looking right into Richard's eyes. "The car will overwhelm you. Completely."

_Bit pretty_ flashed into his head again when Fernando stood directly in front of him, feeling slightly like a deer in Jezza's headlights. "Overwhelm me," he repeated, almost to himself. "Right." A silence followed, thick and heavy enough to smack someone over the head with then make off with their purse. Somehow, and he believed somewhere in the back of his head that this was Fernando's doing, he'd ended up with the backs of his knees pressed against the car's sidepod, effectively stuck between the priceless machine and, well, someone who was inexplicably making his stomach do backflips in an entirely lovely way.

_Bloody racing drivers, they're all the same. If it's not the women they're making swoon, it's the men._

If Richard hadn't been blushing before that thought, he sure as hell was now. Fleetingly he wondered if they might be able to power the car on his embarrassment alone, and if not that then the sheer heat radiating from his cheeks. And the pit of his stomach, but he was really trying not to think about that.

Fernando was still looking at him, faint amusement and smug triumph in caramel eyes and on smirking lips. Richard just stood there, braced against the sleek car and trapped by that gaze, feeling cripplingly flustered. "Um," was all he managed in the space of about two minutes.

"Of course, if you really are worried you'll be distracted, I'll give you something far more pleasant to be distracted by than 'five hundred quid for a bloody wheel nut'."

Richard thought that, if he had been so bold as to ask what he'd be given at that precise moment, he might either be laughed at or not given whatever it was at all, neither of which he really fancied. Especially when, as Fernando leaned in closer, he began to have a sneaking suspicion what he was going to be given anyway.

He managed to get out one more 'um' before he found himself being kissed by an extremely suave Spaniard. There was a hand on his waist, steadying him as he was pressed back against the slippery metal, and another hand sliding around the side of his neck, thumb brushing his jawbone, fingertips playing with the wisps of hair at the base of his neck and sending little sparks straight down his spine. His own hands were doing nothing of the sort, one holding onto the engine air intake behind him and the other just sort of hung there in mid air, unsure of where to go. Once he and his hand were absolutely sure that he was definitely being kissed by Fernando Alonso while halfway reclining on his old Formula One car, he blinked wide eyes a few times and tentatively let the hand settle on the driver's back. Fernando seemed to take this as an indication that he'd triumphed, in what Richard wasn't inclined to guess.

_Seduction, probably,_ he thought, and as if the other man could read his mind, he felt Fernando's lips curve up into a smile as they pressed against his. Then, in what was perhaps a vain attempt to not be outdone, he was blindly returning the kiss and quietly hoping that no-one from either the crew or the race team would happen to walk past what now felt like an extremely exposed tent. There was an almost unsettling expertise in Fernando's touch; Richard felt it in the way fingertips skated around his neck to his throat, teasing for one slightly scary moment at the zip of his race suit before the hiss of synthetic fabric accompanied the slide of a palm down his chest to round his waist. It was all as if he'd done this seduction thing before - with pit crew? With hangers-on, with rivals, with team mates? Possibly...probably...blimey. It was a bit much to be thinking about right at that moment. _Jeremy's head would explode._

Just as the heat stirring in Richard's body began to slip deliciously through his bloodstream, Fernando broke off the kiss. Richard looked up at him, rather more dazed than he'd like to admit and stuck once again in those caramel eyes, he failed at coherence at first. "Um," he began. He swallowed, licked his lips. "Well, uh, yes. That'll...that'll probably," A long pause, his train of thought careening straight through the station. "That'll probably do it."

Fernando seemed to be stifling a grin. "Do what?"

"Um," Richard responded. Fernando's hands were still on him, and even through the race suit his skin was very much aware of them. Then, falteringly, "I-I can't quite remember."

_Now_ Fernando grinned, but it didn't feel to Richard like it was at his expense. "Then it worked."

"Bloody right it did," Richard mumbled as Fernando's hands slid somewhat regrettably from around him. The driver then pulled him upright - by, it should be noted, taking him by the hand and gently encouraging him to his feet. Christ but he felt like such a _girl_. "I am married, you know," he said with just a hint of irritation.

Fernando smiled, raising the hand still linked with Richard's aloft and rubbing his thumb over the wedding band. "So I see. Then that was just motivation."

Richard raised an eyebrow and was compelled to ask. "So what would it have been...if I wasn't?"

That damn smile again. "Foreplay?"

Richard's eyebrows shot up. "You don't mess about, do you?"

Fernando responded merely by kissing the knuckles of the hand he still held, making Richard turn almost crimson with the far too wicked sparkle in his eyes, before letting go and reaching for his sunglasses. "Anyway, you have a car to drive and I have a sponsor to meet with. I think you're ready, I hope I helped in some way."

_Smooth Spanish git,_ Richard thought, pushing a hand through his hair in an attempt to regain some dignity. "Well I'm not thinking about wheel nuts anymore, I suppose," he conceded begrudgingly. He wouldn't admit aloud the butterflies now dancing around in his stomach, and not because of the impending drive. "Thanks," he murmured.

"Not at all, my pleasure. Really," Fernando replied with a chuckle, giving a little wave, slipping on his sunglasses and turning away. Richard eyed him as he walked away, leaning against the car. He began to wonder how all that just happened, how he came to have that unfamiliar but alluring taste on his lips. None of it was his doing, he was pretty sure, but the competitive streak in him wanted it to be his doing next time, and he wanted to do it just as well as Fernando. It would only be later that day, long after leaving the track, that he would realise that he wanted there to _be_ a next time.

"D'you think we could get you back one day and into our reasonably priced car? Have a go around our track?" he asked. When Fernando paused in his tracks and and turned, the other man pointed at him. "If you say anything along the lines of 'I'd like to have a go around _your_ track', I might have to slap you."

Fernando laughed as he backed away, holding up his hands. "All I can say, then, is see you later."

Richard exhaled through pursed lips when the driver disappeared around the side of the tent. He turned to look at the car. "What did you do today, Richard?" he asked himself, predicting how a conversation with his co-presenters might go tonight. "Well, I was flung around Stowe Circuit a few times in a truly magnificent Formula One car. Oh, and I snogged Fernando Alonso. Actually, it was more the other way around. _And_ he thinks I'm intriguing."

A pause, and another one of those delirious, somewhat disbelieving laughs escaped him. "Bloody hell."

_Out of all this, there is one thing for certain,_ he thought with a smug grin as he turned and picked up his crash helmet. _Driving an F1 car at Silverstone_ and _kissing the world champion driver._

_Jeremy is gonna be_ jealous.


End file.
